The Impact of Dalit Panthers Movement | Academician Suraj Yengde In Discussion With Chinki Sinha & Satish Padmanabhan
In a discussion, academic Suraj Yengde, editor Chinki Sinha, and managing editor Satish Padmanabhan unravel the enduring impact of the Dalit Panthers movement, examining caste complexities and modern-day struggles, fostering deeper understanding.
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00:00 Hello and welcome to another Outlook discussion and a very happy Independence Day to everybody.
00:10 We have with us Suraj Yengde, academic and author and you know who's collaborated with
00:16 Outlook this time on this special issue and we have Outlook editor Chinkee Sinha.
00:21 Suraj joins us from somewhere near Aurangabad. Is that right Suraj?
00:27 It's Nanded.
00:28 Nanded. Okay and Chinkee is here in Delhi of course. So the special issue this time is really
00:35 looking at you know even after 75 years of affirmative action, what does freedom mean to
00:40 Dalits today? Why are there so many caste atrocities committed even now? You know every day you open
00:47 the paper there's you know there's something or the other and of course also look at the rise and
00:51 fall of the Dalit Panthers movement which started in 70s. Where does that stand now? Is there a
00:57 revival? So these are some of the issues that we have dealt with you know in this special issue.
01:01 Chinkee if you would like to start as to you know why we even thought of this? Why now at this point?
01:07 Okay well I just firstly wanted to thank Suraj for helping us out with the entire section on
01:14 the Dalit Panthers because it started last year when there was a conversation you know about doing
01:21 this issue on Dalit Panthers because it was their 50th year and somehow we didn't do it that time
01:27 and then this time we wanted to take it as an Independence Day issue because it would have
01:31 made more sense in terms of the atrocities and the idea of freedom itself and what it means for
01:36 different different communities and initially we wanted to take a lot more but you know as with
01:41 the magazine you always end up with these limitations of patience and so we kept it to the SC
01:48 and in the newspaper you keep seeing all these reports I mean you know
01:53 "Kabhi kisi ko ghoda pe nahi baithne de rahe hain" then there are women paraded naked I mean that also
01:57 happened in Manipur but like for example Hathras didn't happen too long ago and there are these
02:03 sporadic not really sporadic I think these are regular incidents or you know of atrocities
02:09 that have been committed but not really dealt with by the mainstream media in a way that you know you
02:14 make a statement or you take a stand so we decided to take a stand with this issue and over a meeting
02:21 we decided that we'll take it on the entire SC community rather than just looking at the movement
02:27 because movements then also kind of the backdrop is the atrocities and so yeah so we have a lot
02:34 of interesting stuff and one of my favorite pieces is by Professor Avias Alone who actually had come
02:40 to one of our museum chats and had talked about this museum of untouchability which clearly doesn't
02:46 exist and we asked him to write a piece imagining this museum and what it would keep or what it
02:53 would display and the architecture and everything and I think imagination also has a role to play
02:58 in journalism which we have always kind of looked down upon that you know facts facts facts but
03:03 facts are not really enough in today's you know and the times are such so we thought we'll take
03:09 a lot of fiction poetry and all kinds of things to kind of like you know I mean the issue is still
03:15 very compact we've not been able to deal with a lot more but we've touched upon a lot of it. See
03:20 that is true in a magazine you know mainstream magazine it cannot never really be exhaustive
03:25 but yes it definitely I mean it's a big thick issue from our side and you know the subject is
03:30 so vast so some of it had to be left out but anyway then for that we always have the you know
03:36 the outlookindia.com you know where all the other articles would be put and you know the
03:41 you know website it has its own ecosystem and it sort of travels and yes Suraj as Chinky said
03:47 thank you very much for collaborating with us and it's I think turned out very very well some
03:53 you know really fantastic academics and historians and scholars that you've got you know from various
03:59 parts of the country to write about the Dalit panthers moment the rise and the fall the politics
04:04 within you know the intricacies between the people and you know the various personalities.
04:09 So for yourself I mean the moment itself I remember you telling me that it's one of the most
04:14 important moments which has not probably got as much say play or recognition in popular
04:22 minds and people's minds. Isn't that what you think? Thank you Satish and thank you Chinky.
04:28 It's been a marvelous pleasure you know it took us through so many mountains and hoops.
04:33 I remember about I was just looking at my timeline to actually look at the exact date or the week
04:40 that I reached out to Satish with an idea in fact it was Satish who said why don't you write a piece
04:46 on rain you guys are doing a special issue but I had I had all something in mind about the Dalit
04:51 panthers because in regional languages there is a documented history but in English language you
04:58 don't see a compact a kind of a souvenir where one can just pick up and and access the literature
05:04 because I was in Tamil Nadu with the VCK with the liberation panthers they have their own
05:09 literature they have their own version of stories and similarly Gujarat and Punjab.
05:14 So it really took like traveling to different places people the the elderly panthers who are
05:19 in their 70s some of them are in 80s to really encourage them and it was so surprising to see
05:26 that even in their age they had so much of an energy when you talk about the movement and they
05:32 were really some people who were like looking to recreate that energy and and really a selfless
05:39 motive behind that for that to kind of come about it was very important and probably to my
05:45 understanding Dalit panthers has been written about there's also one book there was a PhD thesis
05:51 written I think in Marathi and then passes in English but apart from that there's not really
05:56 a contemporaneity of that Dalit panther with such an interesting mix of literature poetry
06:02 and various forms and hopefully down the line my vision was people should access Outlook
06:09 Independence Day special issue 2023 with a commitment to the lives of those Dalits
06:16 who have been undergoing same atrocities and recently what we saw in Manipur it really rings
06:23 bell what happened in Brahmangaon Parbhani where Dalit women were paraded naked and Raja Dhali
06:30 incidentally had written an article in an Independence Day special for Sadhana a socialist
06:37 magazine here and that created uproar but he pointed out that issue so we are really meeting
06:42 at a time situation that the erstwhile history seems like the history is too quick to declare
06:49 itself that it's not a history anymore. Yeah and in fact as you mentioned you know though the
06:54 panthers the original panthers now are in their 70s or 80s but you know there is no lack of
07:00 enthusiasm I remember Chinky meeting Pawar sir and you know I think he was he's 80 plus now and
07:05 you know I remember she telling me how you know full of energy and he's such a wonderful man
07:12 you know who's still so if you would like to tell us a little bit about your meeting there.
07:17 So basically we were looking for you know the Dalit panther the original like the people who
07:22 founded it and it was a literary movement as well and I had been reading Namdeo Das's obviously
07:27 translated poetry I don't know how to read Marathi but also from here and there and then they said
07:33 you must meet J.V. Pawar and I also believe in the serendipity situation you know so we message
07:38 some people and some people message us so many numbers and then you know suddenly I landed up
07:43 at Namdeo Das's wife Mallika Amarshek who also had written a book I Want to Destroy Myself
07:48 which is also very interesting as to how I mean she was a daughter of a communist and
07:53 kind of the movement now the Namdeo Das's bit of it has gone to her after his death and
08:00 how there are a lot of now factions within the movement itself because they're not very happy
08:04 with her choice because she was never involved with the movement directly and
08:08 all kinds of interesting things and then finally I met J.V. Pawar who's 80 years old
08:13 and I remember I was standing at Dadar station you know and he came with an umbrella and all that
08:18 and he's like okay let's go and we went there and he talked so much and it was so nice that he was
08:24 actually he had everything in his memory you know like these dates and he could specifically
08:29 describe what happened on this day and you know our camera batteries ran out our everything
08:34 and he you know finally he sent his piece handwritten because he doesn't use a
08:41 computer so you know we had to put it translated and humility by saying that absolutely
08:48 and it was and through them then some other person came around and they said that why don't you meet
08:55 Anand Tel Tumde and he's out of prison and he lives in Ambedkar's you know house Raj Bruha
09:00 so on any evening we went there and just to have a chat with him and his views also were very
09:06 interesting in terms of the question and the solution and it was quite I mean the thing is
09:12 also while doing these this issue with Suraj we learnt a lot we could revisit certain things
09:18 obviously from given the fact that we come from a completely different side of it it's very difficult
09:24 to understand and I think a lot of it came from this issue I'm not saying that we understand
09:30 completely but it's a very sad the Dalit absolutely yeah absolutely and you know the
09:35 edition the special issue has a very compact piece by Suraj himself you know they're just
09:40 putting the whole thing together and then he goes on to you know if we go on to sort of as he said
09:45 you know to various regions you know to get scholars to write about say Gujarat about Kerala
09:50 about Tamil Nadu what happened there so that process Suraj if you want to just briefly explain
09:55 you know who were these people you can you know sort of identified you know and how they went
10:00 about talking about the panthers in their own area see one of the reasons we couldn't put it out in
10:06 time was because I was just not satisfied with what I had I really felt that we need to really
10:13 scour and comb through the region as much as one can and and that literally took me to this
10:19 exploration and that's why it took some time to come to fruition with Javipar sir for example
10:26 when one of your reporters conducted an interview about a couple days later he calls me up and says
10:33 hey what's happening when is it coming out he was very much he was very much anxious he was very
10:39 much excited to see that because probably I mean there are there are many things he wanted to say
10:45 that are otherwise not being recorded and then also this is his this is his statement right
10:50 so for me the as any ethnographer or researcher who goes on field as Chinky was saying one thing
10:57 leads to another I was trying to really hunt down the leaders and what it took and so you know there
11:05 were two regions that I was really keen on looking at one was the Rajasthan and another was Uttar
11:12 Pradesh because Bihar I could manage of the of their own and there's also a wonderful article
11:18 on the Bihar movement when the list took up the arms but Rajasthan and UP had a very core base
11:23 and so we could get Uttar Pradesh covered by scholar Nikola Jowl but somehow Rajasthan remained
11:29 sort of you know so I even went to Rajasthan I kept asking people and so there was one Mr. Berwa
11:36 at the time who was the leader of Rajasthan Dalit Panther and people seems to have no memory and I
11:41 asked this in one of the public functions of Ambedkarites do they know I could see couple
11:47 of heads only tilting but they didn't had really idea so for this to really come in a compact sense
11:53 it was really sort of revisiting the memories of struggle the Punjabi Dalit Panther leader Mr. S.L.
12:00 Virdi who probably started at 17 year old you know when you talk to him he is he's still 17 year old
12:07 when you are when you're asking him about the struggle and certainly he's somebody who really
12:12 exemplifies if you are part of a movement and if you are committed and convicted you don't really
12:18 go to dogs so to say because there's usually this kind of belief okay you should not do activism
12:23 you should not do participate in social movement because some things are going to go I mean there
12:28 are incidents in Marathwada where I am where we have certain incidents of such nature but also
12:32 if you look at these exemplary cases we really see and there's also in Dalit Panther there's so much
12:38 contradiction there's so much mix Ramdas Sathewale in his interview that I did with him was so
12:43 to our was so accepting he really presented himself as a government minister he said we
12:48 need to start movements you know we cannot just rely on the government we really need a movement
12:52 like Dalit Panther and at the core Ramdas Sathewale is a field worker who grew up under the mentorship
12:58 of Raja Dhali and then he of course admired Namdev Dasal and the literary giant and that's how the
13:04 progress of the movement has been so what what we see here the the gravitas of Dalit Panther
13:09 of course it's an historical trajectory but there is a lot of echoes in various pockets about
13:15 restarting certain national movement and then when I went to research at least in Maharashtra I
13:21 realized almost every second district has a Dalit Panther but by a different acronym by a different
13:28 leader by a different gesture and I was so surprised and their issues are so radical they
13:33 want to fight for land rights which is the government waistline what we call gairangam
13:37 their idea is to contest atrocities and they want to go there on the field and demonstrate
13:41 their presence the idea is about accessing education for youth the medical care and when
13:48 I was looking at it there is a certainly enigmas every historic community has a paragon there is a
13:56 citation of a milestone that might act as a history so Dalit Panthers movement was that but
14:01 also what it does in its own form is like going on the stage you are improvising yourself you are
14:08 inculcating your own cultural hybridities Tamil Nadu for example or for that example Kerala
14:13 the Kerala Dalit Panthers were themselves I mean in the communist state having a Kerala Dalit
14:19 Panthers and then those people now the leaders are now towards Buddhism they want to invest
14:25 toward Buddhism and of course there was a little bit of disappointment as always happens people
14:30 are depressed the family gets targeted by some means or other so there's always sacrifices to
14:34 that so what we see that is in this sense is there is a certain momentary historical truth
14:41 that we have tried to bring forward and hopefully this remains and this as we said we could not
14:47 include all of it maybe a something later of a book form that I hope to do intentionally
14:52 will act like okay somebody did and I really would like to applaud Outlook it has really been a very
14:58 charming and welcoming space for new ideas I mean when I propose the idea of 50 that's very that's
15:04 kind of you and I mean you know of course it was great working with you and to you know bring out
15:08 this as you know Suraj was saying yes you know the Athavale interview is very revealing the Nicholas
15:13 Joel piece is so fascinating he came to India as a 21 year old young boy and he starts off you know
15:19 a French student and he starts off like that from youthful position then he recounts how the
15:24 very fascinating article and apart from you know that these Dalit fan that articles of course we
15:29 also have thinking that our own reports you know there is also reportage I mean it's not
15:33 just columns and you know interviews there's you know on the feminist Dalit movement that
15:39 our reporter project where uh
15:46 yeah at Birch and from that time onwards we were talking about this piece then you have I think
15:54 so we need to mention the cover the cover came from Nayanthara who works with the feminist memory
16:02 project and everything and her work was at Kochi and I've known her for a long time so that's why
16:06 I'm saying like this whole idea of collectives that we have been promoting in terms of journalism
16:11 because that's the new way I think Nayanthara just showed up at my house with these books
16:15 she was living for Kathmandu and you know one of the books on the Dalit you know movement in Nepal
16:22 it had this photo with a poem and then it just struck me that this could be the cover and that
16:28 became the cover a lot of interesting artists like the Dalit Panther Project which is the new
16:33 ish kind of art but looks at and then of course the Sadhana magazine guy I mean you spoke to him
16:38 and we mentioned that 72 Raja Dalit came out with this whole thing of Black Independence Day
16:45 and Sadhana magazine carried it that time Indira Gandhi was like celebrating this 25 years of
16:50 Indian independence how much has changed yeah he was so good to I mean yeah and you know one
16:57 absolutely one striking thing in this issue was how helpful you know the people that we've
17:02 contacted have been you know I called up Sadhana magazine's editor Vinodji just in the morning
17:08 yeah he was I think putting together an issue and he said I told him sir you know we are running
17:12 against a deadline if you could please send the piece and he sent the piece in a few hours you
17:16 know by evening it had landed so I know he must have put his own work you know on hold and you
17:22 know sat and written this so that has been an amazing experience we sent him the question
17:28 that night I sent it and the next day with a polite thing that I have you know written 79 words more
17:34 and I'm like how humble is this guy I grew up in Bihar in a very caste oriented kind of society
17:42 and said and I was there when the whole Mandal movement the Mandal commission thing happened
17:48 and there was this emulations in JNU and obviously was too young to understand any of these
17:52 things at the time and we were grouped together as a whatever forward cast and then this whole
17:58 uh you know victimization situation where we had made ourselves believe that you know there's
18:03 nothing for the time of coming of Lalu which changed situation in Bihar forever Bihar was
18:09 the first state by the way to uh I mean not implement rather but pass the land reforms thing
18:14 and you say and all these castes we would hear about but we had no idea there was a people's
18:24 party somebody in my own family was there and many years later I met that guy and you know he
18:30 explained a certain thing a certain you know context of what was happening at the time and
18:35 cut to what 2020-21 the RJD ties up with CPL ML which was formerly the people's party
18:43 so we asked Ubesh and you know the caste census which is being done to bring back the conversation
18:49 on caste which is kind of a caste 22 between the devil and the deep sea you use caste to kind of
18:55 keep Hindutva at bay and that article was a very interesting one that we are finished to do and
19:02 yeah so all of these interesting things that you know you probably read about and observe
19:08 or some things that you have experienced but where you were not able to relate kind of so
19:13 those things and other thing I wanted to mention that we have also like one of the first
19:17 encounters with caste you know deeply engaging way was uh through uh people who worked you know
19:23 around us uh and I had never thought about it in my first journalism application I think I wrote
19:27 about Munia who used to be a toilet cleaner but I could never understand like why uh you know the
19:33 chai was given to her in a broken cup which was pushed with a stick which I asked my grandmother
19:38 and you know there were all these ambivalent kind of answers but nobody gave like a clear-cut answer
19:43 and then Mulk Raj Anand's uh book the untouchable which was uh in our syllabus at that time now the
19:50 syllabus I don't know what it is but during those times it was a day in the life and that kind of
19:57 and over the years obviously Sudhara Kolve all these kinds of people that we've met
20:00 so you know what I want to say is that not just this a lot of uh things that happened in the past
20:06 over the years that came together in bringing out this issue absolutely so it is really I mean uh it
20:13 is really a special issue in that sense I mean not just like a term and it is a collector's item and
20:19 it's got uh you know a whole range of subjects that we've dealt with thank you very much uh Suraj
20:25 for the collaboration and uh thank you thank you so much for being so patient and we learned so
20:31 much now I feel like I'm more equipped to answer these strange questions being thrown at us about
20:37 caste and you know sometimes you don't understand like Dalit Panthers for instance was like such a
20:42 beautiful uh thing and I wish they would regroup and yeah so the issue must be out now in the on
20:48 the stands please do go pick it up and for all those otherwise I mean there is always uh www.
20:54 outlookindia.com thank you very much